Royal Court of Justice.
Reversing neglect: A statement from Quakers in Criminal Justice
‘How can this state of affairs embody the core requirements of the prison service?’
We welcome the prime minister’s early recognition that the prisons crisis requires urgent attention, and his appointment of James Timpson as minister for Prisons and Probation – a man who understands the rehabilitative value of prisoner employment. Reversing decades of neglect will not be easy; we therefore call upon Shabana Mahmood, the new secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), to consult with experts from prison charities and elsewhere to help clarify the way ahead. The Prison Governors’ Association has warned that ‘the entire criminal justice system stands on the precipice of failure’. There must be a change of direction from ever-more offences and ever-lengthening sentences, which have become a shorthand for demonstrating that a political party is ‘tough on crime’.
